Obama wrong to bully SCOTUS

President Barack Obama’s recent comments about the Supreme Court are more than disappointing — they’re disturbing.

Talking about the health care law, the president said last week that it would be an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” for “an unelected group of people [to] somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” He tried to correct this statement the next day, saying he was referring to laws regarding “economic” issues, but still refused to retract his previous statements.

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Though a former constitutional law professor, the president seems to have forgotten that the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government. It is the court’s job to review our laws, to ensure they don’t exceed Congress’s limited authority or violate Americans’ constitutional rights.

It is not unprecedented for the court to declare a law unconstitutional — the justices do it on a fairly regular basis. Since the 1980s, the court has averaged about two decisions a year striking down a federal law. The justices have been particularly vigilant about preventing Congress from using its power over interstate commerce to regulate activities that are not interstate or commercial.

For example, in U.S. v. Morrison (2000), the court struck down a federal law that let victims of sexual assault sue their attackers in federal court. The reasoning was that the law bore only an indirect relationship to interstate commerce.

The court expressed concern that if Congress could define committing an assault as “interstate commerce,” then Congress could define virtually anything as interstate commerce — and have unlimited authority over the lives of American people. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the majority opinion, if allowed to stand, the law would “completely obliterate the Constitution’s distinction between national and local authority.”

If suing a sex offender is not “interstate commerce,” then neither is the decision to not purchase health insurance — despite what the president thinks about the health care law.

Another problem with the president’s comments is that he ignores what is unprecedented about this case: the individual mandate. Never before in U.S. history has the federal government forced the American people to purchase a product or service.

The Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate economic activity, which includes everything from managing a restaurant to running a Fortune 500 company. But there is a difference between regulating economic activity that is continuing and forcing Americans to engage in an activity against their will — in this case, purchasing health insurance. Under the Obama administration’s interpretation of the Commerce Clause, Congress could force Americans to buy any good or service.